The Death of Jude

If ever one had seen a person die, one had not seen a person die the way Jude died. Sometimes life can wonder if maybe the moment a person realises that they are going to die, they allow themselves to die instantly to avoid going through the bother of saying goodbye and coming to terms with it. It is a self assisted euthanasia, a non personal suicide.

Jude wasn’t at all bothered this day with the prospect of walking back to his house on the corner of that street and trying to remember which key opens the door and knowing that he will fail to find the right one first, did not interest him.

Jude was going to die, and it wasn’t going to be amazing. He wasn’t going to suddenly take out some loans and do all the things he had always wanted to do, because he knew nobody would give him money. He wasn’t going to tell everyone he had ever loved or hated that he loved or hated them once, because he never loved or hated anyone. He had done nothing, and now that it was over, he wasn’t at all bothered. He didn’t care. Life and death were just a computer game to him, get bored and sell it on ebay or just save the game and try again later.

The ground Jude used to walk on when making his way up the hill to that stupid house was boring. He knew there was a name for it but he hadn’t read enough in his life to know what the name was. They were rocks but all pushed down at the same level, with dirt and cracks and ants and weeds and years of rubbish and cigarette butts ingrained into the crevices with the assistance of rain.

Some days the number on his letter box was 65 and other days it was 8, the number his mother told him the day she left. The days the number was 8 were the days he wished he didn’t have to leave the house. He would check every morning before he left and when it was 8, his heart fell and he wanted nothing more than to go back to bed, and usually he did.

Where the ground stopped being old rocks it turned into dirty black tar that smelt on hot days. It was tar because this was where the King lived, and he liked people to feel uncomfortable when walking past his house and therefore making the effort not to dawdle. The King lived in a small house, just large enough to have his mistress’ visit him on occasion but just small enough to allow them never to move in. He had a special bin at the front of his place that was emptied only once a month and it was full of the things that his mistress’ would “accidentally” leave at his place, in which he would immediately dispose of along with that particular mistress herself. He had no time for common folk. The King was a King, after all. Jude cared not for the King.

It was late and Jude was tired. This day he took the side road into the flower street where there were those flick flowers he read about in magazines. The sort of magazines your parents brought you to teach you the things they didn’t have time to teach you about. Like how to associate with other children, what toys you might like to have brought for you, and sex. He wasn’t interested in the flick flowers because every time he tried to use them they would fall off onto the ground instead of flying at his unsuspecting victim. They were a disappointment, like every other thing in his childhood.

He took a shortcut through that shop he sometimes looked at. He knew all of the people that worked there and they always smiled and said hello, even though he never once acknowledged them or ever brought anything from them. They were the type of shop that had a conveyor belt running around a huge and terribly painted plaster statue of a boat. On the conveyor belt were small plates with different types of sushi and other Japanese foods. On a dirty table to the side of the conveyor belt there were boxes of tofu cakes filled with capsicum and mushroom soaked offensively in soy sauce. Jude only ate Cruskets, Nuttelex and Vegemite. He had always been happy enough with that as he didn’t see eating as a pass time, rather a necessity.

The day Jude died was a day like every other but one that nobody had ever thought of. That morning he watched the television as it spoke of a boy from the school up the road who had died from a drug overdose. They would say they could not say his name at the same time as printing it across the bottom of the screen. He thought about his poor parents as he knew very well the reputation of the school, and how disappointed they would be that their money did not go to better use. They say the boy accidentally inhaled the drug while vacuuming at a friends place. Not one of the thirty other teenagers that were in the vicinity can remember the exact moment the boy had died, just that he was no longer living, and that nobody had any time to think about what it is they had to say, to be good.

To be good. To be good.

The first thought that came to Jude’s mind when he realised he was about to die was that the letter box had read 65 that morning, and that this was supposed to be an ordinary day. He did not understand this, but it surely added to his decision that he was not going to attempt to escape this relatively certain death.

The day Jude died the world was red, of course. The hills that he stood on while he looked down at the part of town he usually saw as blue, were red. Not the colour of death, just the colour of life not being real and he understood what it meant. Everything was normal, like a normal day. The number on the letter box was 65 so his day would be normal. Jude did not expect anything more.

That day the men that changed the number had forgotten to come. They had been distracted by something they saw on the news about the school up the road. They had been distracted by fixing the tar that welcomed the mistress’ into the King’s abode. They had been distracted by the terrible translation that somehow made a sushi train into a sushi boat. They had been distracted, and they forgot to come. They had forgotten to tell Jude how to live his life this day.

The day the world went red for Jude, he had forgotten to feed his fish, Percy, the one that lived in the window on rainy days. He felt sorry for Percy, sorry and worried that he might not make it through the day. Then Jude died.

The only thing that others will notice is the colour of the sky, the tar on the ground, those numbers that add to nothing and a little fish that will now die too, in the sky, with time on it’s side.